Monday – October 2, 2017
It was sunny and a comfortable 71 degrees this morning. Our group enjoyed a tasty breakfast at the Cinema Hotel. Afterwards Rafi Rozanes, our Israeli tour guide, conducted an introductory briefing in the hotel library. Afterwards, we were off to explore on our first day in Israel. We passed the beautiful beach in Tel Aviv which is located in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.
The bus drove us to the ancient port of Jaffa which is the oldest part of Tel Aviv and is a natural harbor which has been in use since the second millennium BC. Jaffa or Yafo is famous for its association with the biblical stories of Jonah, Soloman, and Saint Peter, so it was fitting for Rafi to relate the story of “Jonah and The Big Fish.”
We walked through lovely alleyways of Jaffa’s Old City. Parts of the city were renovated and have become gentrified so today, Jaffa is a tourist attraction featuring art galleries, theaters, souvenir shops, and restaurants.
In recent times, the two cities have physically joined together and Jaffa is part of Tel Aviv and has a multi-ethnic population of Arabs, Christians, and Jews. We stopped at Ilana Goor’s Museum to see her artworks and her incredible house which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. The artist was born in 1936 in Tiberius, Israel and still lives in the house.
The 18th century house is a fantastic backdrop for the artist to display her own works as well as art works of other contemporary artists. The Ilana Goor museum has a collection of more than 500 works of art which she amassed during the last 50 years from many parts of the world.
Later,we continued to explore and we stopped at a Yemenite jeweler’s studio near the Goor Museum. We heard about the 47,000 Yemenite Jews who left Yemen in 1949 during Operation Magic Carpet and settled in Jaffa.
Outside there was an archaeological project which showed the many layers of ruins hidden beneath the earth of Jaffa since Egyptian times. Rafi explained the ancient history of Jaffa to us. Beyond was St. Peter’s which is a Franciscan church built between 1888 and 1894. A previous church had been built in 1654 over the original church which was erected during the 13th century.
We walked to an overlook and admired the skyline of Tel Aviv in the distance.
Rafi told us the history of Jaffa and Tel-Aviv and showed a photo of Jewish families who used a lottery system to divide the land among themselves in 1909.
Afterwards, we walked to the old section of Jaffa and explored the markets. This neighborhood was full of shops and stalls selling carpets and used furniture.
We stopped at a Juice Bar called Cocco Bongo for a cold drink of fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. The temperature was in the mid 80s and the juice was very refreshing.
We continued to an area that looked like a flea market with used clothing and household items spread on the ground and on makeshift tables.
After we walked around for quite a while, we took our bus to the home of a local woman who lives in Jaffa. She had prepared a light lunch for us. Her name was Doris and she introduced herself as a Christian, Arab, Israeli because she is a Christian woman whose family is from Lebanon and she lives in Israel.
Doris entertained us with stories about her life and experiences living in Israel. I think we had a peek into what it’s like to live in a multicultural environment in the Middle East. Doris showed her ‘bomb shelter’ to us on our way out and we bid our farewells. All houses in Israel are built with secure bomb shelters.
We returned to the Cinema Hotel and I took a few photos of some of the artifacts in the public areas. The hotel is an authentic Bauhaus building dating back to the 1930s. The hotel was once one of Tel Aviv’s first movie theaters and has wonderful original theater memorabilia on display.
